Yes, stupidity can be an advantage. A literal rock can defeat any intelligent opponent at chicken, if it’s resting on the gas pedal (the swerve-to-avoid-collision version, rather than the brake-closer-to-the-cliff-edge version).
The catch is that you making yourself dumber to harvest this advantage has the same issues as other ways of trying to precommit.
We can model a rock either as having no preferences, but we can also model it as having arbitrary preferences—including the appropriate payout matrix for a given game—and zero ability to optimize the world to achieve them. We observe the same thing either way.
The rock wins at chicken, for any model that accurately describes its behavior. One such model is as an agent with a game-appropriate utility function and zero intelligence. Therefore, an agent with a game-appropriate utility function and zero intelligence wins at chicken (in the case as constructed).
It proves that we can construct a game where the less intelligent player’s lack of intelligence is an advantage. OP shows the same, but I find the rock example simpler and clearer—I especially find it illuminates the difficulties with trying to exploit the result.
It proves that we can construct a game where the less intelligent player’s lack of intelligence is an advantage.
That’s pretty trivial. Any time you do something to avoid unpleasantness (e.g. not jump off the roof of a tall building), you can frame it as a game where you lose and some feature of the environment cast as an unintelligent player (e.g. gravity) wins.
The verb “to win” strongly implies preferences, not just behavior. A rock doesn’t win at chicken, as it doesn’t have a payout matrix that can define the utility values of outcomes.
I think it demonstrates something stronger—we have, as humans, already developed a game (Chicken) with very meaningful outcomes in which lower intelligence is beneficial, despite the fact that the humans in questions were not intending to select for low IQ and would not have seen a rock as a valid player.
If we are talking about Chicken we do not have to assume a rock (which has no preference), but simply a human with bad judgement, or slow reactions, or who is panicking.
Yes, stupidity can be an advantage. A literal rock can defeat any intelligent opponent at chicken, if it’s resting on the gas pedal (the swerve-to-avoid-collision version, rather than the brake-closer-to-the-cliff-edge version).
The catch is that you making yourself dumber to harvest this advantage has the same issues as other ways of trying to precommit.
The advantage of a rock is not that it is stupid. The advantage of a rock is that it has nothing to lose—it is indifferent between all outcomes.
We can model a rock either as having no preferences, but we can also model it as having arbitrary preferences—including the appropriate payout matrix for a given game—and zero ability to optimize the world to achieve them. We observe the same thing either way.
Given that we observe the same thing no matter how we model the rock, I’m not sure what that proves.
The rock wins at chicken, for any model that accurately describes its behavior. One such model is as an agent with a game-appropriate utility function and zero intelligence. Therefore, an agent with a game-appropriate utility function and zero intelligence wins at chicken (in the case as constructed).
It proves that we can construct a game where the less intelligent player’s lack of intelligence is an advantage. OP shows the same, but I find the rock example simpler and clearer—I especially find it illuminates the difficulties with trying to exploit the result.
That’s pretty trivial. Any time you do something to avoid unpleasantness (e.g. not jump off the roof of a tall building), you can frame it as a game where you lose and some feature of the environment cast as an unintelligent player (e.g. gravity) wins.
The verb “to win” strongly implies preferences, not just behavior. A rock doesn’t win at chicken, as it doesn’t have a payout matrix that can define the utility values of outcomes.
I think it demonstrates something stronger—we have, as humans, already developed a game (Chicken) with very meaningful outcomes in which lower intelligence is beneficial, despite the fact that the humans in questions were not intending to select for low IQ and would not have seen a rock as a valid player.
If we are talking about Chicken we do not have to assume a rock (which has no preference), but simply a human with bad judgement, or slow reactions, or who is panicking.
So,
Well, ‘proof’ aside, it demonstrates that:
Among other apparently maladaptive responses.